Soda cans and other beverage containers are commonly sold in six, twelve or twenty-four pack configurations. The cans are either held together by a plastic retainer of enclosed into a cardboard box. The customer must rip the box apart or separate each can from its plastic retainer before placing them into a refrigerator. The procedure is time-consuming and the cans occupy a great amount of space on a refrigerator shelf once they are placed there in an upright position.
Automatic vending machines for sodas are typically refilled from twenty-four pack boxes in which they are transported to the machine site. The box must be ripped apart and the cans fed one-by-one into the vending machine mechanism.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,330,958 Ruskin et al. discloses a vending machine that accepts substitutable magazines capable of holding up to thirty-two cans or bottles. The magazines are filled at a central location, brought to the vending machine site, and installed into the machine after the previously installed empty or partially empty magazine has been removed. The capacity of the magazine is limited by its weight. Thirty-two soda cans, each containing 355 milliliters (12 fluid ounces) of liquid weigh about 11.4 kilos (25 pounds). When added to the weight of the magazine itself, they create a load that may exceed the maximum lifting weight imposed by labor and safety regulations. Currently substitutable magazines are limited to a twenty-four-can configuration. Due to this limited capacity, the substitutable magazine concept has only been applied to small counter-top vending machines, and, to this day, it has found no use in large vending machines capable of storing up to six hundred cans or bottles.
This invention results from attempts to provide a more practical and efficient way of packaging symmetrical articles, and to provide a more efficient way to load articles in vending machines.